Great books have their lives as surely as do their authors. Sometimes they correspond; sometimes not. Which one has the stranger life is often unpredictable.

Take Walt Whitman and his “unkillable work,” Leaves of Grass. It had multiple nineteenth-century lives, as Whitman brought out edition after edition in attempting to give the fullest possible depiction of modern American life. None, however, gained much traction with the general public until well into the twentieth century. Nor did Whitman, America’s self-proclaimed national poet. Or take Herman Melville, who complained to Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1851 that he would go down to posterity as “a man who lived among the cannibals” as the author of the popular South Sea adventure story, Typee. Melville’s guess wasn’t far off. His name was linked to Typee during his lifetime, and the novel he was then pouring his heart and soul into, Moby-Dick, got little attention for its first 60 years.

But for even greater strangeness, take William Wells Brown and his once unknown, now canonized, Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States. Brown wrote the novel in 1852-53 while living in London as a fugitive slave. Too well known to dare to return home to Boston while the Fugitive Slave Law was in effect, he published it with a mainstream London publisher that marketed it solely in the British Isles. In all likelihood, the only copies to reach the U.S. at the time, like the inscribed copy for abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, were gifts Brown posted to friends and editors. Not until 1969, well into the Civil Rights movement, did the novel get its initial publication in this country, although it took several more decades before it began to take hold with the general public.

Perhaps so stridently partisan a novel would have had limited appeal in antebellum America. Intending to shock, Brown made the callous president in the title Thomas Jefferson. More to the point, he made its central character Jefferson’s unacknowledged slave daughter, Clotel, who along with her mother and sister was auctioned off, one by one, in Richmond and sold into the depths of southern slavery. In conceiving this earliest African-American novel, Brown drew on rumors circulating among abolitionists and rife throughout the African-American community about Jefferson’s relations with his slave woman “Sally.” But Brown, unacknowledged son of a white father, would not have needed such rumors to know a thing or two about abandonment by white fathers of black progeny. What made Jefferson special to Brown was that he could be cast as father also of the ill-matched American twins, liberty and slavery. That distinction gave Clotel symbolic heft.

After addressing the British public in 1853, Brown turned back to the American public in the three revised versions of the novel he published over the next 14 years. Each time, he addressed a different audience, recalculating his bearings to keep pace with radical societal shifts brought about by the Civil War and its aftermath. He published the earliest American edition, retitled Miralda, as a weekly serial running from November 1860 to March 1861 in the leading black journal of the time, the New York Weekly Anglo-African. Blackening his central characters and intensifying their racial solidarity, he addressed that version primarily to African American readers — a calculated move that coincided with the events redefining their civic standing as the nation plunged into sectional war.

In 1864, he slightly reworked the text, now Clotelle: A Tale of the Southern States, and published it as a dime novel in a series (“Books for the Campfires”) marketed to soldiers in the Union Army. Whatever their political leanings, they were effectively fighting to end slavery. Finally, in 1867, Brown added a series of chapters to update the story, renamed Clotelle; or, The Colored Heroine, that returned Clotelle and her husband Jerome from self-exile in Europe to lives of racial service in the wartime South. Jerome joins the Louisiana Native Guard, a black regiment involved in the frontal assault on Port Hudson. His unit fights bravely, but Jerome dies a needless death carrying out a reckless mission urged by his white superior officer. Widowed, Clotelle goes to work as a nurse and spy at Andersonville Prison during the last months of the war. Following peace and abolition, she turns to education of the freedmen, eventually operating a school on the confiscated grounds of the plantation of her enslaved youth. In 1867, that was as rounded an ending to his years-long narrative of slavery as Brown could conceive.

Brown’s reputation proved as volatile as his book’s. Well known in the United States and United Kingdom as a writer, activist, and public speaker during his lifetime (1814-84), he lapsed into obscurity for nearly a century as Jim Crow erased black presence from the country’s political, historical, and cultural record. That long, imposed hibernation seems finally to be ending. All his many books are now back in print or accessible via the Internet. And in this, his bicentennial year, he has passed through the gateway of canonized American literature with a selection of his finest works collected in the Library of America.

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A healthcare worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital has tested positive for Ebola after a preliminary test, the state’s health agency said.

Confirmatory testing will be conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

The employee helped care for Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person ever diagnosed with Ebola in the United States. Duncan died on Wednesday.

“We knew a second case could be a reality, and we’ve been preparing for this possibility,” Dr. David Lakey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, said in a statement Sunday morning.

“We are broadening our team in Dallas and working with extreme diligence to prevent further spread.”

If confirmed by the CDC, the healthcare worker’s case would mark the first known transmission of Ebola in the United States and the second-ever diagnosis in the country.

David Sanders, associate professor at biological sciences at Purdue University, said he thinks the CDC testing will likely support the preliminary results.

The family of Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan are venting their outrage that the late Liberian may not have received the same quality of care leading up to his death Wednesday morning as the other patients treated in the U.S. for the dreaded virus.

‘No one has died of Ebola in the U.S. before. This is the first time,’ Duncan’s furious nephew Joe Weeks told ABC.

Weeks and others in Duncan’s family are calling his treatment ‘unfair,’ after seeing other patients pulled from the brink of death in government-funded evacuation planes and using life-saving blood transfusions and cutting edge drugs.

Five US citizens have been diagnosed with Ebola and three of them have beaten it. NBC News cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, the latest American victim, arrived at the infectious disease ward at the University of Nebraska Medical Center this week for treatment. A fourth victim, a World Health Organization doctor, is being treated in Atlanta.

All five have been flown to specially-designed infectious disease wards in Nebraska or Atlanta for treatment by some of the world’s top doctors.

The anger from Duncan’s family also stems from what happened before Duncan was seen by doctors but after he fell ill – when the Liberian was initially turned sent home by Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital – the same hospital that later admitted him.

‘What if they had taken him right away? And what if they had been able to get treatment to him earlier,’ said Dallas pastor George Mason, a confidante of the family’s, according to a CNN report.

While Mason told reporters that Duncan’s fiance Louise Troh ‘is not seeking to create any kinds of divisions in our community,’ she has called for a full review of his medical care.

“He was treated the way any other patient would have been treated, regardless of nationality or ability to pay for care. We have a long history of treating a multi-cultural community in this area.​”
By Tuesday afternoon, Jackson had met with hospital officials and was leading a prayer vigil with hospital employees and Duncan’s nephew, Josephus Weeks.

“I appreciate you,” Weeks said to hospital staffers. “No amount of thanks in the world I can give you. [I am] forever in my debt for treating a man who had no means. He had no ways. But you treated him like a diamond. I appreciate all the efforts you’re putting in. Thank you on behalf of my family.”
At a news conference following the vigil, Jackson was asked if he thought there was an issue of racism at play.

“I don’t want to say that, only because that could become the headline,” he said. “Whether you are white in Atlanta or whether you are white in Nebraska or black in Dallas — we know there’s different treatment among blacks in this country.”

But his tone had changed since the morning. Before he left the city, Jackson spoke highly of Duncan’s care.

“I think they’ve done a marvelous recovery, and we want to embrace the hospital staff and work with them on his recovery,” he said.

However, Jackson added that he remains concerned that Duncan was sent home from the hospital the first time he sought help there.

In this Feb. 26, 2014 file photo, an election official checks a voter’s photo identification at an early voting polling site in Austin, Texas. A federal trial opens Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2014, that will decide the fate of one of the nations most stringent voter ID laws. A judge will hear arguments on whether the law safeguards ballot integrity or discriminates against minorities by imposing a mandate that suppresses turnout. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

Article courtesy of Will Weissert and Todd Richmond of the Associated Press

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A federal judge likened Texas’ strict voter ID requirement to a poll tax deliberately meant to suppress minority voter turnout and struck it down less than a month before Election Day — and mere hours after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked a similar measure in Wisconsin.

The twin rulings released Thursday evening represent major and somewhat surprising blows to largely Republican-backed voter identification rules sweeping the nation that have generally been upheld in previous rulings.

Approved in 2011, Texas’ law is considered among the nation’s harshest and had even been derided in court by the Justice Department as blatant discrimination. Wisconsin’s law was passed the same year and has remained a similar political flashpoint.

“We are extremely heartened by the court’s decision, which affirms our position that the Texas voter identification law unfairly and unnecessarily restricts access to the franchise,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement. “We are also pleased that the Supreme Court has refused to allow Wisconsin to implement its own restrictive voter identification law.”

U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of Corpus Christi on Texas’ Gulf Coast, an appointee of President Barack Obama, never signaled during a two-week trial in September that she intended to rule on the Texas law before Election Day. But the timing could spare an estimated 13.6 million registered Texas voters from needing photo identification to cast a ballot.

The Justice Department says more than 600,000 of those voters, mostly blacks and Hispanics, currently lack eligible ID to vote.

Gonzales Ramos’ nearly 150-page ruling says the law “creates an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote, has an impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans, and was imposed with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose.” It added that the measure “constitutes an unconstitutional poll tax.”

Republican Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office said it would appeal, but in the meantime the state may hold the election under rules that predate the voter ID law.

“The Court today effectively ruled that racial discrimination simply cannot spread to the ballot box,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

In the Wisconsin case, meanwhile, the nation’s highest court used a one-page order to grant an emergency stay sought by the American Civil Liberties Union and blocked implementation of the state’s voter ID law — overturning a decision by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals three days earlier that declared it constitutional.

Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented. Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said in a statement that he believed the law was constitutional and that “nothing in the Court’s order suggests otherwise.”

Still, Luis Roberto Vera, Jr., national general counsel for League of United Latin American Citizens, said “You can call it the perfect storm against voter ID.”

“It’s a total victory on both fronts,” Vera said.

Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said the order “puts the brakes on the last-minute disruption and voter chaos created by this law,” that he said imperiled the vote for thousands of registered voters in the state.

Wisconsin advocates now have 90 days to file a formal petition asking the Supreme Court to take up the case, a deadline so far beyond Election Day that the law may not be reinstated by Nov. 4. The dissenting Supreme Court justices raised concerns that absentee ballots had been sent with no notification of the need to present photo IDs — and that there was not enough time to address this issue before voting begins.

Nineteen states have voter ID laws. Courts nationwide have knocked down challenges — including at the U.S. Supreme Court. But Texas’ case attracted unusual attention from Holder.

He brought the weight of his office to the case after the Supreme Court last year struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act. It had blocked Texas and eight other states with histories of discrimination from changing election laws without permission from the DOJ or a federal court. Holder vowed to wring whatever protections he could from the new and weakened version, and made Texas a first target.

“Even after the Voting Rights Act was seriously eroded last year, we vowed to continue enforcing the remaining portions of that statute as aggressively as possible. This ruling is an important vindication of those efforts,” Holder’s Thursday statement said.

Abbott is the favorite to replace outgoing Texas Gov. Rick Perry in the Nov. 4 election. His office had argued that minorities and whites alike supported the law in public opinion polls. It also pointed to other states, such as Georgia and Indiana, where the similar measures have been upheld.

But opponents slammed Texas’ law as far more discriminatory. College students IDs aren’t accepted by poll workers, but concealed handgun licenses are. Free voting IDs offered by the state require a birth certificate that costs little as $3, but the Justice Department argued that traveling to get those documents imposes an outsize burden on poor minorities.

As a result, attorneys argued, Texas has issued fewer than 300 free voter IDs since the law took effect.

LOS ANGELES — With the public in the U.S. and Latin America becoming increasingly skeptical of the war on drugs, key figures in a scandal that once rocked the Central Intelligence Agency are coming forward to tell their stories in a new documentary and in a series of interviews with The Huffington Post.

More than 18 years have passed since Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb stunned the world with his “Dark Alliance” newspaper series investigating the connections between the CIA, a crack cocaine explosion in the predominantly African-American neighborhoods of South Los Angeles, and the Nicaraguan Contra fighters — scandalous implications that outraged LA’s black community, severely damaged the intelligence agency’s reputation and launched a number of federal investigations.

It did not end well for Webb, however. Major media, led by The New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, worked to discredit his story. Under intense pressure, Webb’s top editor abandoned him. Webb was drummed out of journalism. One LA Times reporter recently apologized for his leading role in the assault on Webb, but it came too late. Webb died in 2004 from an apparent suicide. Obituaries referred to his investigation as “discredited.”

Demonstrators march through the streets protesting the October 8 killing of 18-year-old Vonderrit Myers Jr. by an off duty St. Louis police officer on October 9, 2014 in St Louis, Missouri. The St. Louis area has been struggling to heal since riots erupted in suburban Ferguson, Missouri after the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer on August 9. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

By Carey Gillam and Kenny Bahr

ST LOUIS, Mo. Oct 9 (Reuters) – Police clashed with protesters in St. Louis on Thursday for a second night after an officer killed a black teenager, ahead of a weekend of planned rallies in the area over the August killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.

Throughout the night, as many as 400 demonstrators spread out across several city blocks in south St. Louis, angrily shouting and chanting at rows of police officers, many of whom were clad in riot gear.

Dozens of protesters had met earlier at the site in the Shaw neighborhood where 18-year-old Vonderrit Myers Jr. was shot dead on Wednesday by an off-duty white officer working for a private security firm in what police described as a firefight.

But demonstrations grew increasingly chaotic. At one point early on Friday morning, a line of police pushed towards a group of several dozen protesters who jeered and cursed at them, pepper-spraying those who refused to disperse.

St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson told local television station Fox 2 that at one point during the tense protest, someone behind the massive crowd threw a knife that struck an officer’s body vest at the shoulder.

He added that a police car and several businesses and residences had been damaged and that U.S. flags were burned. Two people had been arrested by midnight local time, Dotson said, during which one officer suffered minor injuries.

The St. Louis area is bracing for further unrest over the killing of Brown by a white police officer two months ago, with Myers’ death on Wednesday expected to add fuel to the fire.

Several civil rights organizations and protest groups, including Hands Up United, planned to mark the weekend with marches and rallies in St. Louis and the suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, where Brown was killed.

The groups are demanding the arrest of the officer who killed Brown, and want to draw attention to police treatment of black Americans. Protest organizers said they are planning only peaceful activities, but fear that Wednesday’s killing of the black teen might trigger violent outbursts.

“We never advocate violence … But I do know that people were angry last night and they will be out this weekend,” said Tory Russell, a leader of Hands Up United. “I don’t know what they are going to do.”

At least 6,000 have registered on an organizing website for the “weekend of resistance” events in and around Ferguson, which kick off on Friday with a “Justice Now” march to the office of St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch.

The weekend is to be capped with actions of “civil disobedience” on Monday.

Organizers said they are also planning to create a “memory altar” to victims of police violence and to hold a candlelight march carrying a coffin to the Ferguson Police Department.

Ferguson Mayor James Knowles said law enforcement officers throughout the area are planning for large crowds and possible violence.

“There are a lot of people coming into town,” said Knowles. “We are going to be prepared. There is intel out there that there are people wanting to do bad things. And people who want to cause a problem are going to use that (the shooting on Wednesday) as a rallying cry,” he said.

The police department would not identify the 32-year-old officer who shot Myers. Police said Myers fired multiple times at the officer, before the officer returned 17 shots and fatally wounded him.

The officer was not hurt and was placed on administrative leave as the shooting is investigated, police said.

Relatives of Myers said he did not have a gun, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

The shooting sparked protests that raged until dawn on Thursday. One person was arrested and several police vehicles were damaged in the unrest, police officials said. (Reporting by Carey Gillam in Kansas City, Mo.; Editing by Catherine Evans).

WASHINGTON (AP) — States that toughened their voter identification laws saw steeper drops in election turnout than those that did not, with disproportionate falloffs among black and younger voters, a nonpartisan congressional study released Wednesday concluded.

As of June, 33 states have enacted laws obligating voters to show a photo ID at the polls, the study said. Republicans who have pushed the legislation say the requirement will reduce fraud, but Democrats insist the laws are a GOP effort to reduce Democratic turnout on Election Day.

The report by the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative agency, was released less than a month from elections that will determine which party controls Congress.

The office compared election turnout in Kansas and Tennessee — which tightened voter ID requirements between the 2008 and 2012 elections — to voting in four states that didn’t change their identification requirements.

It estimated that reductions in voter turnout were about 2 percent greater in Kansas and from 2 percent to 3 percent steeper in Tennessee than they were in the other states examined. The four other states, which did not make their voter ID laws stricter, were Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, and Maine.

“GAO’s analysis suggests that the turnout decreases in Kansas and Tennessee beyond decreases in the comparison states were attributable to changes in those two states’ voter ID requirements,” the report said.

The study cautioned that the results from Kansas and Tennessee don’t necessarily apply to other states with stricter ID laws. It also found that of 10 other studies that mostly focused on voting before 2008, five found no significant impact from voter ID laws, four found decreases and one found an increase.

The report said that in Kansas and Tennessee, reduced voter turnout was sharper among people aged 18 to 23 than among those from 44 to 53. The drop was also more pronounced among blacks than whites, Hispanics or Asians and was greater among newly registered voters than those registered at least 20 years.

Estimated falloff among black voters was nearly 4 percent greater than it was among whites in Kansas, and almost 2 percent larger among blacks than for whites in Tennessee, the report said.

Young people and blacks generally tend to support Democratic candidates.

A group of Democratic senators including Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Vermont independent Sen. Bernard Sanders requested the study and said Wednesday that it confirmed their arguments and reaffirmed the need to pass legislation making it harder to curb voting.

“This study confirms the real impact of Republican efforts to limit access to the ballot box. Playing politics with the right to vote is a shameful practice,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

In letters included with the report, the Republican secretaries of state for Kansas and Tennessee challenged its accuracy. Kansas’ Kris Kobach said if voting data from 2012 and 2000 were compared, it would show little effect on turnout. Tennessee’s Tre Hargett said the GAO report used biased information from a “progressive data firm.”

The report also:

—Examined 10 other studies that found that the portion of registered voters with driver’s licenses or state ID’s ranged from 84 percent to 95 percent. In seven of the studies, blacks had a lower rate of ID ownership than whites;

—Found that in 17 states, the costs of acquiring the required ID’s ranged from $14.50 to $58.50;

—Evaluated multiple studies that detected few instances of in-person voter fraud, but said it is difficult to gather data that would produce a reliable overview of the problem.